


This Blessing is a Curse

by tawg



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Pining, not angst so much as irritation, set during 1967, so buckle in, the SoHo caper, written for the prompt How Dare You
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 18:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20586920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: Aziraphale (reluctantly, against his better judgement, and with a great many feelings about the matter) makes holy water.





	This Blessing is a Curse

He heard of it as he heard of most things: from the mouths of aunties who were just as gossipy as he was. "That skinny bloke of yours. He's up to no good."

And Aziraphale had laughed a certain kind of laugh (the kind with an edge hiding behind his many white teeth. The kind of laugh that encouraged topics to be dropped and conversations to be over), and said "Obviously," had said something like, "He always is, that one," even though that wasn't the whole truth of it at all.

Why on earth did Crowley have to be up to no good in SoHo? They'd recently settled on bordering territories, because from the great distances of Heaven and Hell it all got fuzzy and became overlapped, and keeping the tally even became much easier when they didn't have to criss-cross countries to do it.

Ageless beings, but they were both getting too old for much running about. When had that happened? 

And since when had Crowley become "his", as opposed to anyone else's? Knowing Crowley, he'd be affronted by the idea of being attributed to anyone else, let alone _assigned_ to someone for safe keeping. Crowley had always been quietly adamant about being a serpent of his own accord. He thought hierarchy was a hinderance and played fidelity like a fiddle. Even the Arrangement... Well, that was the answer to the "when" question, and also the "how" and the "why", and furthermore it kept annoyingly posing the question, "whatever were you thinking??"

The thing was — and Aziraphale had known this well before he had learned it — the thing about entering into a deal with the devil was that there were _consequences_. The consequences were rather the point of it all, as far as devils were concerned.

Crowley had said, "May I tempt you?"

And Aziraphale had said, "Oh? Certainly!"

And for all that Crowley had promised a simple cancelling of each other out, a simple trade of favours and sharing the load, mutual benefit and minimal risk... (For all that he had delivered on warm red wine and delightfully rude conversation and utterly perfect timing...)

If Heaven found out that Aziraphale had been in league with a demon, he would be exiled. If Hell found out that Crowley had performed Heavenly duties on Earth... Well, there was only so far one could Fall, and Crowley had already travelled the full length of that distance. If their plan were to be discovered, Aziraphale would be, well, he would be terribly inconvenienced by what came next. Crowley, though. Crowley wouldn't just be killed, he would be destroyed. Obliterated. Annihilated. He would endure a kind of endedness that Aziraphale would never know.

And so that was the catch hidden in their gentleman's agreement. The consequence was that Crowley was his responsibility now.

But, oh Lord, that was a trial too far beyond him.

Crowley couldn't be kept out of trouble, because making trouble was his business. Crowley couldn't be kept close, because familiarity bred suspicion. Crowley couldn't be kept safe, because there was nothing at all safe about an angel and a demon swapping odd jobs every few months and then sharing sandwiches in the park.

Robbing a church. Oh hell.

Aziraphale closed his shop. And sealed it. And barred it. He stared at the gloom for a long moment, frowning, until every crack and crevice was sealed. He itched to light a candle, but the shop had been stuffy before and he couldn't bare to burn up what little air was entombed with him. (And an electrical light would just spoil the mood.)

He walked through the darkness to the small office. There was a large silver dish there that he tended to drop his mail into. It had once been a shield of one of the Knights Templar, and Aziraphale had kept it when he parted ways with them. He had used it as a fruit bowl well into the nineteen-fifties, when Crowley had dropped by and made a rather scornful comment about Aziraphale keeping his apples on lockdown. (Swapping it out for a fetching bowl of a cheery blue glass had never been commented on; Crowley was never drawn to easy, attainable things.)

Aziraphale tipped the mail out, and wiped the dust and detritus out of the bowl with a tartan cravat that had been happily minding its own business only moments before. The office wasn't the place for such rituals, but he recoiled from the idea of performing it over the large rug in the centre of the wide space — it wasn't something to be performed at all, wasn't something to be done within neat lines and careful words. He went to the back nook of his shop instead. Went to the comfortable two-seater that only ever sat one person at a time. Went to the little retreat filled with half-read books, and bottles of wine within easy reach and the long, curving spaces so easily filled by lankly sprawling limbs.

He sat on the sofa, and put the plate on his lap, and bowed his head.

Holy water. Damn that serpent.

The thing about holy water was that all things were holy, to some small degree. It was a side-effect of the whole creation business. Holiness could be concentrated and diluted. It could be evaporated and precipitated. When dealing with the elements of earth, holiness was just one of the many components hiding in the space between atoms. It was inherent and ever-present and mostly harmless. As with all things, it is simply the dosage that makes the poison.

And, for the purposes of convenience, a corporeal vessel of an unearthly presence is essentially a rather shapely reflux apparatus. Capable of corralling together holiness and doling it out as a blessing or evaporating it away as a curse. Capable of holding it and distilling it and, as an act of defence, secreting it.

Oh, he'd gotten into such trouble at first. You can't just shed a tear on the ground and give rise to a blessed spring every time it all gets a bit much. The power of Heaven... It was meant to be restrained, purposeful. It wasn't something one unleashed in a moment of emotion.

Emotions, blasted things. Aziraphale suspected that life would be much simpler without them. And briefer, perhaps, for a lot of people.

Mesopotamia, for instance. He hadn't expected to cry. Feeling sad was even a surprise, in the face of one of the Almighty's works. Feeling... Uncertain. Oh dear. That wouldn't do at all, but what else could he do? And angry. Crowley (nee Crawley) had been so angry when the scant details had come out. It was all so overwhelming, and Aziraphale was glad, in that moment, to have the distraction of biting back tears.

It would be one thing to cry during the flood. Maybe even appropriate, perhaps, to bless the rains that were to clear the land. But he couldn't risk more than a watery expression with the demon beside him. And besides, it just didn't seem right to bathe destruction in holiness. Crowley's presence was a kindness, in that moment, for all that Crowley was simmering with rage. Because it meant that Aziraphale wasn't a lone witness, though he expected to be. There were so few people then; so few angels and demons walking the earth (though more of them on the surface than there were now. Why was that?). It meant that he wasn't alone with his thoughts, because Crowley was speaking them, and that made it so much easier to recognise them for the wrong things they were.

He can still taste it. The flavour in the air of oncoming rain, the taste of unshed tears in the back of his throat. The bitterness. Hopelessness and fear. Crowley had been so angry at him for not doing anything, and Aziraphale had been drowning inside the dam he had so hastily erected within himself. _(Damn him, yes, certainly_).

There wasn't a single right thing he could do in that moment. To witness meant the death of the humans. To intervene would likely bring about his own. To cry along with the breaking clouds above would be a disaster.

Sometimes the least destructive option was to simply do nothing.

Aziraphale inhaled through his nose and held his breath. Held it until he felt the space in his chest become a gaping emptiness. And in that space, something loosened.

It had been Crowley's logic that nothing mattered. It didn't matter who did the work, so long as it got done. It didn't matter what got done so long as it looked like something had. It doesn't matter, nothing matters, Angel, don't you understand that?

But how could things do anything but matter? How could matter be anything but meaningful? Holiness floating and shimmering betwixt it all, proof right before him that even the emptiness was filled and full and overflowing. (So then how could he feel it? The emptiness?)

_How dare you_, Aziraphale thought, with a sudden surge of angry bitterness. How dare you ask these things of me. How dare you chase after them when I deny you. How dare you refuse the safety of the roles we have been given, and instead court so insistently for something else. (How dare you tempt me, how dare you take advantage of me, my dear, and allow me to crave.)

Aziraphale, the angel of too many miracles, drew in a shuddering breath.

Heaven kept track of miracles and could trace blessings if they chose. If a demon were to die from angelic intervention (or vice versa), there would be no hiding the matter. It had been a convenient spanner to throw in Crowley's works, one that Crowley had thrown in himself. He had seemed deaf to Aziraphale's panic, over a hundred years ago. Why would a man seeking to procure a weapon be shocked by the inevitable outcome of one? He had assumed that Aziraphale's protests were self-serving (of course they were), were borne from a desire to keep himself out of trouble with his higher ups (don't leave me, dear thing, don't you dare it).

The consequence of entering into an arrangement with Crowley was the continued presence of Crowley. The heartbeat of Crowley's footsteps through SoHo, the inconvenience of the unsaid words muddying the air between them, the futility of trying to be responsible for him.

Of course Crowley would ask this of him. _Be responsible for this, Angel. Take action for once._

To provide the means to the end would be the opposite of protecting him. But refusing to do so certainly wasn't keeping him safe. Aziraphale could not protect Crowley from the consequences of their arrangement. They both knew that. In truth, Aziraphale was the only one who had even considered being deluded otherwise.

Aziraphale felt the crack, the cutting bruise of it. It was like an egg with an exceptionally thin shell, finally giving under a gentle but persistent pressure. His face broke and his features shifted into lines that would hurt to look at. His emptiness cracked, and was suddenly flooded and overflowing. He was overflowing. He was drowning. He was doomed, dooming them both. 

_Oh Lord, forgive me._

In the silence of the bookshop, tears fell heavily, inconsistently, onto a silver plate that still smelled vaguely of apples.


End file.
